Maybe it's something in the water, in the blood. Maybe it's the
long winters that drive people to warm themselves with wild
music and dance. Canada continues to produce a fine crop of
young traditional musicians.

Of these, April Verch is a stellar example. As a pre-schooler,
she developed a fierce love for step dancing and fiddle in the
distinctive regional style of Ontario's Ottawa Valley. By the
time she finished high school, she had criss-crossed Canada
performing, teaching, recording three albums, and winning
hundreds of fiddle and dance contests. She was the first and,
thus far, only woman to win both the Canadian Grand Masters and
the Canadian Open Fiddle Championships.

After a year at Boston's Berklee School of Music, where she
devoured new genres and techniques, she became a full-time
performer with percussionist husband Marc Bru. In 2000, she was
signed as a Rounder Records artist, her formidable skill,
confidence, and soul belying her age of twenty. She promptly
produced Verchuosity, a CD that garnered a JUNO
(Canadian "Grammy") and introduced her to audiences in the USA,
where she has played the gamut from intimate coffeehouses to the
Kennedy Center.

In 2003, April Verch found a new talent for singing, and employed
it a CD produced by Bruce Molsky. From Where I Stand
is a dazzling mix of old-time Carter Family, ripping French
Canadian reels, original tunes, Appalachian, and Latin-infused
music. Her 2006 CD, Take Me Back, was produced by
Dirk Powell (of the Cold Mountain soundtrack). Here her voice has
grown in eloquence, matching the limberness of her fiddle and
feet as she boldly takes on whatever styles she loves: soulful
country, bluegrass, Cajun, Texas swing, Scandinavian, jazz
fusion, profound love songs, and always the backbone of rare
traditional Canadian songs and dance tunes.

These musical explorations are not hollow eclecticism, but a
product of virtuosity and passion. April Verch and her band
respect tradition but deliver it with freshness and fire.

Please join the Cornell Folk Song Society in welcoming April Verch and
Company to open the Spring 2007 season. It will be a high-energy romp!

Tickets are available at
Ludgate Farm Market,
Ithaca Guitar Works,
Greenstar Co-op,
Small World Music,
and, if any are left, at the door.
You may also order tickets
online
and by mail: SASE to CFSC, PO Box 481, Ithaca, NY 14851.